Shaiza Rizavi is a money manager, managing member, and co-CEO at Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co., a dual-registered broker-dealer and investment adviser committed to giving individuals who possess long-term patience and fortitude an opportunity to create wealth. Her approach to aggressive growth investing is grounded in investigative research, a mindset developed while working in the public defender service in Nashville and Washington D.C., and in Southeast Asia where she worked alongside nonprofits thinking about what resources would be needed to combat child prostitution and child labor in the region. Imagining the future, Shaiza now invests in companies creating a new class of products and services that look to change people’s lives while building capital.
A graduate of Vanderbilt University and Columbia Business School, Shaiza remains active at both institutions.
At Vanderbilt, she chairs the Campaign Cabinet for Peabody College. At Columbia Business School, she co-chairs the advisory board of the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change, sits on the investment board of the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures, and serves on the School’s advisory board.
In addition, Shaiza is board chair of Acumen, where she learns about business strategies to tackle poverty in East and West Africa, India, Pakistan, and the Americas. She also serves on the board of fellows at Weill Cornell Medicine, the advisory board of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Seeds of Peace. Along with her husband, Shaiza co-chairs the Tisch parents' council at NYU. She is a member of the Economic Club of New York and the Woman Fly Fishers Club.
Shaiza lives in New York City with her husband Jon Friedland and their four children.